(Photographed by Mathew Brady in 1864: Courtesy of the National Archives)

Source: Richmond National Battlefield Park

Recommended
Reading:Not War But Murder: Cold Harbor 1864. Review From Library
Journal: On June 3, 1864, the Union Second, Sixth,
and Eighteenth Corps assaulted Confederate breastworks at Cold Harbor outside Richmond,
VA. The resulting bloodbath amounted to U.S. Grant's worst defeat and "Bobby"
Lee's final great victory. In his latest book, native Virginian and Baltimore Sun correspondent
Furgurson (Chancellorsville, 1863) vividly retells the well-known story of how the friction between Grant and his insecure
direct subordinate, George Meade, poisoned the Army of the Potomac's whole chain of command.
Continued below…

By contrast,
he depicts Lee as a commander beset by poor health and impossible logistical problems who brilliantly deployed his meager
forces and soundly thrashed his overconfident adversary, thereby saving the rebel capital and extending an unwinnable war
by nearly a year. The book is rich in word pictures and engaging anecdotes. Furgurson considers the wounded that were left
to suffer with the dead between the lines while Lee and Grant quibble over protocols of recovery; the disastrous affect of
poor maps and impassable terrain on the Federal assault; and Grant's immediate need to bring Lincoln a battlefield victory
before the 1864 presidential election. Furgurson's contribution is his evocative retelling of a great American military tragedy.

Recommended
Reading:Cold Harbor: Grant and Lee, May 26-June 3, 1864, by Gordon C. Rhea (Hardcover). Description: In his gripping volume
on the spring 1864 Overland campaign--which pitted Ulysses S. Grant against Robert E. Lee for the first time in the Civil
War--Gordon Rhea vividly re-creates the battles and maneuvers from the North Anna stalemate through the Cold
Harbor offensive. Rhea's tenacious research elicits stunning new facts from the records of a phase oddly ignored
or mythologized by historians. The Cold Harbor of these pages differs sharply from the Cold Harbor
of popular lore. We see Grant, in one of his most brilliant moves, pull his army across the NorthAnnaRiver
and steal a march on Lee. In response, Lee sets up a strong defensive line along Totopotomoy Creek, and the battles spark
across woods and fields northeast of Richmond. Continued below…

Their back
to the ChickahominyRiver and on their last legs,
the rebel troops defiantly face an army-wide assault ordered by Grant that extends over three hellish days. Rhea gives a surprising
new interpretation of the famous battle that left seven thousand Union casualties and only fifteen hundred Confederate dead
or wounded. Here, Grant is not a callous butcher, and Lee does not wage a perfect fight. Every imaginable primary source has
been exhausted to unravel the strategies, mistakes, gambles, and problems with subordinates that preoccupied two exquisitely
matched minds. In COLDHARBOR,
Rhea separates fact from fiction in a charged, evocative narrative. He leaves readers under a moonless sky, Grant pondering
the eastward course of the James River fifteen miles south of the encamped armies. About
the Author: Gordon Rhea is the author of three previous books, a winner of the Fletcher Pratt Literary Award, a frequent lecturer
throughout the country on military history, and a practicing attorney.

Recommended
Reading:Bloody Roads South: The Wilderness to Cold Harbor,
May-June 1864, by Noah Andre Trudeau.
Description: "Nobody has brought together in one volume so many eyewitness accounts from both
sides."-Civil War History Winner of the Fletcher Pratt Award. In this authoritative chronicle of the great 1864 Overland Campaign
in Virginia, Noah Andre Trudeau vividly re-creates the brutal forty days that marked the beginning of the end of the Civil
War. In riveting detail Trudeau traces the carnage from the initial battles in Virginia's
Wilderness to the gruesome hand-to-hand combat at Spotsylvania's "Bloody Angle," to the ingenious trap laid by Lee at the
NorthAnnaRiver,
to the killing ground of Cold Harbor. Through fascinating eyewitness accounts, he relates
the human stories behind this epic saga. Continued below…

Common soldiers
struggle to find the words to describe the agony of their comrades, incredible tales of individual valor, their own mortality.
Also recounting their experiences are the women who nursed these soldiers and black troops who were getting their first taste
of battle. The raw vitality of battle sketches by Edwin Forbes and Alfred R. Waud complement the words of the participants.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK: "Bloody Roads South is a powerful and eloquent narrative of the costliest, most violent campaign of the
Civil War. Grant vs. Lee in the Wilderness, at Spotsylvania, and at Cold Harbor has never been told better."-Stephen W. Sears, author of The Landscape Turned
Red. About the Author: Noah Andre Trudeau is an executive producer for cultural programs at National Public Radio in Washington, D.C. He is the author of
Out of the Storm: The End of the Civil War, April-June 1865 and The Last Citadel: Petersburg,
Virginia, June 1864-April 1865.

Recommended
Reading:
Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign (Civil War America)
(Hardcover) (The University of North
Carolina Press) (September 5, 2007). Description: In the study
of field fortifications in the Civil War that began with Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War, Hess turns to the
1864 Overland campaign to cover battles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor. Continued below...

Drawing on
meticulous research in primary sources and careful examination of trench remnants at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna,
Cold Harbor, and Bermuda Hundred, Hess describes Union and Confederate earthworks and how Grant and Lee used them in this new era of field
entrenchments.

Recommended
Reading:
The Battlefield of Cold Harbor, Hanover County, Virginia, 1864 (Map). Review: The site of Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern
Virginia's last Civil War Victory is one of astonishment, battlefield courage, and horrific carnage… This
work includes the most complete, accurate and detailed maps of the battle of Cold Harbor
ever published. Watercolor and colored pencil map showing farms, mills, entrenchments, watercourses, woods, fields and residences
are all meticulously detailed and scaled to perfection. Continued below...

The reverse side includes an account of Union mapping at Cold Harbor; full
color reproduction of the Army of the Potomac’s Overland Campaign theater map; and photographs of two prominent Union
topographical engineers, W. H. Paine and W.A. Roebling. A welcome addition to every Civil War buff’s library as well
as the individual that appreciates detailed topographical maps. FIVE STARS.